9 March 2011

Their names “Thomas and Thomas” … along with names like “Simpson and Day”, have resonated throughout the Australian birding community for more than a decade. The Thomases are ornithologists from Cambridge (UK). In the 1990s, they lived in Canberra and for three years, worked and travelled throughout the country. They meticulously documented their birding exploits, along with advice from local birders and assembled the very first – and almost certainly the most “complete” – where to watch guide for Australian birds. This month, the second edition of their The Complete Guide to Finding Birds of Australia (CSIRO Publishing) hit the book-shelves.

The Complete Guide to Finding Birds in Australia (CSIRO Publishing)

In its day, the guide was ground-breaking and trend-setting (some Australian content in books like Wheatley’s Where to Watch Birds in Australia and Oceania (Helm) were mysteriously similar, even down to detail on maps). The 2nd edition follows almost precisely the same contents as the first. It guides the reader anti-clockwise around Australia, beginning in Victoria and ending in South Australia but adds an extra section for islands and external territories and, for Australian birders, a section on rarity hotspots.

There are also panels of beautiful bird photos by David Stowe … it’s not obvious why the book would need this, except if you imagine being a first-time visitor to Australia, tantalised by the prospect of seeing things for oneself – how exciting to see those pictures. Since the book is largely maps and text it also makes for a more ‘colourful’ read.

Like the 1st edition, the final chapter (10) is about pelagic birding but the pièce de résistance is the Bird Finding Guide, an annotated list of all the birds of Australia that cross-references locations elsewhere in the book. It’s just great to be able to browse places you can find particular species … it helps for planning those trips and reaching the magic 700!

So by all accounts, up until publication of this 2nd edition, no other where to watch guide for Australia could claim to be anywhere near as complete. So what’s new in 2011?

First, every site in the book has, at some point relatively recently, been visited by either the authors or a reliable birder. Although since 1996, about 10% of sites may have become redundant (usually due to total habitat loss), the vast majority still hold their birds. Second, the book includes about 10% additional sites. For example, there is a second site for Chestnut-breasted Whiteface.

Since the first edition, the world wide web has emerged as a major information source (it barely existed in 1996). The 2nd edition usefully supplies readers with web sites for recent sightings and further detail that would never fit in print. With so much information online, I wonder what the 3rd edition will look like? For the time being, that doesn’t matter. The exponential growth of birding info online has foregone attempts to reasonably catalog it so far. Google searches increasingly throw up content of varying quality, discordant and widely distributed in sites that aren’t easy for an outsider to find. For reasons of time more than anything else, it’s impractical for anyone – let alone any amateur birder – to sweep the web and compile comprehensive information for a trip.

This is why The Complete Guide to Finding Birds of Australia is an indispensable addition to the library of anyone looking for a general introduction to bird finding on the continent. If Australian birders are to find any small fault, it’ll be in the fine detail of some local information. For this, there has had to be some trade-off. At 463 pages and for a mega-diversity continent like Australia, the publication was an encyclopaedia undertaking.

… this is an indispensable addition to the library of any birder looking for a general introduction to bird finding on the continent.

Sure, the book could in some cases, could be more specific and maybe there are other better local sites for some birds. However, birding wouldn’t be the challenge it is, if there wasn’t still some skill involved. The important thing is, the 2nd edition authors, that includes Australians David Andrew and Alan McBride, have done much of the initial hard work for you. It’s taken 3-4 years to revise.

When the Thomases self-funded print-runs of the first edition, they had now way of knowing it would become this popular and they’d be rewarded with a second edition 15 years later. This guide isn’t any old book, it’s part of Australian birding history. It is a monument to the status of Australia’s birds in the mid-1990s and beyond … and encouraging to know that most birds can still be found where they were 15 years ago. It has been the influence for a whole generation of birding newbies and Australian visitors and the 2nd edition comes at a time when popularity of birdwatching in Australia is gathering momentum.

It will almost certainly reinvigorate interest in birding for years to come.

Buy THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO FINDING BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA (CSIRO Publishing) at Andrew Isles http://www.andrewisles.com/all-stock/publication/the-complete-guide-to-finding-the-birds-of-australia

Octavo, paperback, 463 pp. colour photographs, maps. ISBN: 9780643097858
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/21/pid/6411.htm

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